Indigenous Customs and Colonial Law

Abstract

This article looks at the contesting articulations of gender, family, and religion in colonial South India. The article discusses the encounter between matrilineal customs and the Anglo-Muhammadan law in the site of Mappila Muslim matrilineal practices in colonial Malabar, of the Madras Presidency during c. 1910-1928. Young male members of the joint family used the language that matriliny is un-Islamic, and passed laws in the Legislative Assembly to demand that joint family property requires to be inherited in the patrilineal line. Three legislations were passed during the period of 1910-1940 to bring Muslim families in accordance with the ideal notions of familial organization existed in that period. The ideal notions were set up by the precepts of the Anglo-Muhammadan law, the orientalist knowledge of Islam, ideologies of colonial modernity, and dreams of caste and religious reform movements among the people of Malabar, and other neighboring states, Cochin and Travancore. In response to that, there was a re-articulation of customs and familial practices by using legal provisions available in the Islamic law, and an effort for justifying the practices to avoid the ruin of matriliny. Subsequently, the matrilineal Mappilas of Malabar retained matrilineal customs rather intact, though the gender relations and religious practices were re-articulated in the idioms of patriarchy and textuality.